


Beanies

by WhiteSwanCake



Series: Scraps / Drabbles / Ficlets [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Fluff, Fluff, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 16:09:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13721268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteSwanCake/pseuds/WhiteSwanCake
Summary: A ficlet about the Jones/Charming family along with other extensions dealing with the onset case of magic resistant hair critters.





	Beanies

**Author's Note:**

> A friend of mine has a 13 year old daughter who has hair down to almost her butt.  
> Well. Had. Lice struck. Repeatedly. With gusto.  
> Her loss prompted this ficlet.

Esperanza Jones is a flash of raven hair, clever green eyes, and blurred limbs chasing the light of day before it disappears. Emma is thankful beyond reason for the quiet that has settled on Storybooke for years, and the children that occupy the close knit neighborhoods surrounding their home. Every day in the last warm days of fall, Esper can run free after completing her fifth grade homework, playing soccer or touch football, sometimes just roaming the neighborhood in shrieking packs playing shadows and pirates (unaware of the underlying horror of the game's history).

Every night, after dinner, the routine is the same. The fire inherited from her parents turns into embers, as her beloved Papa reads to her from Harry Potter. Sometimes he lets her read, carefully twirling the long black of her hair that matches his own absent mindedly.

Esper had been old enough to take a shower by herself for a while now, but let's Mom helps her into pajamas, or occasionally when the mood strikes, one of the many nightgowns her Grandma has gifted her. Then, they sit at her vanity, Mom brushes her hair out, a hundred strokes on each side to keep it from tangling, and braids it to create the waves she'll let out in the morning.

Papa has said that he has seen mermaids before, and she's prettier than any of them by far. Mom says that a pirate protects their treasure and fights for it. Esper's treasure, at ten years old, is her routines and her hair.

* * *

 

It's her uncle's stupid fault. He's so dumb, and when he picks up the baseball cap on the ground, left by who knows who, no one stops their game of Sardines to care or ask where he got it.

It's Sunday night, so dinner is at Grandma and Grandpa's house, out on the farm. When they get called inside, Grandpa ringing a large iron bell, the cap gets placed on Gideon, who puts it on Alexandra, who throws it at Robin, which she models. They eat at the kids table, heading to the basement to watch movies, laying on pillows together and sometimes wrestling over the last red vines or milk duds.

When he starts itching his head in school, the teacher calls the nurse.

The nurse checks his class, then another, and then the other grades, and discovers an invasion of nightmare creatures has made it's way onto the heads of most of the children in Storybooke. Lice.

Esper is heartbroken when she finds out that her aunt Regina can't kill them with magic. She is heavily pregnant, finally successful with her new husband as they adjust to moving back from the city, which makes her extra cranky. Esper only notices her mood improve when she has a plate of beignets set in front of her, balanced precariously on the roundness of her stomach. Eating one, powdered sugar dusting her dark red lips, she wonders aloud how Storybooke created magic resistant lice.

Esper slinks home, and tearfully hugs her Mom, who smiles easily. Her Papa also takes it in stride. They've dealt with lice before, thousands of times, apparently. Pirate ships and foster homes have prepared them for this occasion.

The store is out of lice shampoo when Killian calls Emma to confirm the brand. Esper hears a note of irritable amusement in his voice when he says they'll have to do things the 'old fashioned way'. Papa does a lot of things the old fashioned way.

Mom puts mayonnaise in thick globs on her hair, covering it with a plastic shower cap. When they rinse, she combs with the tiniest comb Esper's ever seen. Mom mutters something, and her lips get thin. That's not a good mom face.

* * *

 

Nothing works.

Every day for the next 5 days, Esper wakes up to a itchy head. Mom and Papa have replaced her bedding, bagged her stuffed animals, poured all manner of strange concoctions on her head, and combed her hair constantly. The invaders only seem to multiply in spite of their methods. 

Over their routine on a night of picking out more and more bugs, Papa says quietly that Liam always had to keep his hair short, or he'd otherwise be infested. Mom glares at him, and Esper starts to cry.

* * *

 

They cut it the next day, a Saturday. Esper watches as thick black chunks of her hair litter her Grandma's porch. It's getting cold now, colder still without her hair.

She goes home that night, and wears the thickest winter beanie hat she can find, wondering if her parents will let her homeschool since she is doomed to be ugly until it grows back.

The next morning, she tells her Papa through her locked door she's not going to family dinner. She can practically see his sad nod, and his frown as he simply says aye lass.

She listens for her parents, but only hears hushed voices from the kitchen. Mid afternoon, a strange sound breaks the silence.

Esper pokes her head out, only to see in through the open door of her parent's room soft feathers of gold falling to the floor. Her Mom's face is firm determination as her Papa shaves off her long gold hair.

* * *

 

The Christmas card that goes out shows the entire family smiling and laughing on that Sunday dinner, immortalized for the season. Esper is seated with her shining head and a huge grin, a bald laughing Killian and Emma seated on either side of her. Knowing they can all grow their hair back with magic once some has grown back in, a sea of bald or patchy haired family all looking at the camera are surrounding her, Neal holding a baseball hat up (clean this time).

The cards say in curling red script,

 

##  _**"Merry Christmas -** _

###  _**Naughty or Lice?"** _

**Author's Note:**

> No beta or editor, if you like this, please let me know.  
> Reviews make me the happiest little looney in the bin.  
> You can find me on tumblr at Courtorderedcake, to see more of my twisted soul.


End file.
